Research Reports
1 - 10 of 123 results
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Ranked Choice Voting and Racial Group Turnout
- Posted: November 2, 2015
- Author(s): Andrew Douglas
- Categories: Ranked Choice Voting, Ranked Choice Voting in Bay Area Elections, FairVote Research on Local Elections, Research & Analysis, Home, FairVote, Voter Turnout, All Reports
A recent study on the impact of RCV in San Francisco presents some surprising findings on differences in turnout between racial groups that contradict previous research on the subject. In this report, we take a closer look at the study and find serious methodological flaws that cast doubt on its findings.
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Comparative Structural Reform
- Posted: August 31, 2015
- Categories: Ranked Choice Voting, National Popular Vote, Presidential Elections, Reforms, Fair Voting/Proportional Representation, Research & Analysis, Home, Redistricting, Voter Turnout, All Reports, Districts Plus
Comparative Structural Reform presents an extensive assessment of the potential impact of 37 structural reforms to election laws and legislative structures in collaboration with 14 prominent political scholars. Scholars participating in the project are authorities on electoral reform and legislative functionality, with extensive collective expertise and mastery of both quantitative and qualitative approaches to the study of American legislatures, elections and electoral rules. Each of the participating scholars was asked to assess each reform’s impact on 16 different criteria fitting within four topline categories: legislative functionality, electoral accountability, voter engagement, and openness of process. Scholars were compensated for their participation. All scholars responded to all eleven surveys and provided a wealth of insightful comments, new sources, and useful information in addition to their well-considered ratings of each reform.
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Recommended Reforms to California's Top Two
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RCV vs Other Voting Systems – By the Numbers
- Posted: April 15, 2015
With over 100 elections conducted using RCV in the U.S. since 2000, there is much data RCV and its relationship to voter turnout, ballot spoilage, voter behavior and strategy and numerous other aspects of RCV elections. To explore these data, visit our "RCV Statistics" page.
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Fuzzy Math: Wrong Way Reforms for Allocating Electoral Votes
- Posted: January 28, 2015
- Author(s): Claire Daviss, Rob Richie
- Categories: National Popular Vote, Presidential Elections, Home, All Reports
States have a constitutional obligation to decide how they will allocate their electoral votes during presidential elections. Almost all states currently use statewide, winner-take-all rules, which gives all of the state's votes to the winner of the statewide popular vote. But some states have considered alternative methods, such as the whole number proportional system and the congressional district system. We look at the effect these systems would have on presidential elections. Neither system promotes majority rule, increases competitiveness nationwide, or ensures voter equality.
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Federal Primary Runoff Elections and Voter Turnout Declines, 1994 - 2014
- Posted: November 17, 2014
- Author(s): Robert Fekete, Rob Richie
- Categories: Ranked Choice Voting, All Reports
Many states currently use runoff election systems during primaries for statewide federal posts. However, the two-election runoff system leads to high turnout declines and a less representative second election, particularly if there is along time delay between the two elections.
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The Role of Cities in National Popular Vote Elections
- Posted: June 13, 2014
- Author(s): , Andrea Levien, Rob Richie
- Categories: National Popular Vote, Presidential Elections, All Reports
In debating options for reforming presidential elections in the United States, the most promising alternative to the status quo is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV). But even though we use popular vote elections to select every member of Congress and all 50 governors, some NPV skeptics warn that its adoption would have a partisan impact on presidential elections. They fear that Democrats could increase their national vote totals by focusing resources on major metropolitan areas, while Republicans could achieve similar gains only by spreading their resources across more geographically dispersed, non-urban areas. This report challenges this argument in three ways.
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The Role of Cities in National Popular Vote Elections
- Posted: June 13, 2014
- Author(s): Andrea Levien
- Categories: National Popular Vote, Presidential Elections, Home
This report challenges the argument that a national popular vote for president would advantage Democratic or urban voters in three ways. First, we demonstrate that urban areas, when properly defined as metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), lean only modestly toward the Democratic Party.
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How the 2012 Presidential Election Has Strengthened the Movement for the National Popular Vote Plan
- Posted: May 2, 2014
- Author(s): , Andrea Levien, Rob Richie
- Categories: Presidential Tracker, National Popular Vote, Presidential Elections, Presidential Elections State-by-State: Hardening Partisanship
This article, published in the June 2013 edition of Presidential Studies Quarterly, surveys the inequality in campaign resource allocation during the 2012 presidential election and demonstrates that this inequality is unlikely to dissipate unless more states enact the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
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Redistricting Reform in the South
- Posted: February 21, 2014
- Author(s): Devin McCarthy , Christopher Zieja
- Categories: Congressional Elections, Fair Voting/Proportional Representation, Home, Redistricting
Nowhere in the United States are the pernicious effects of gerrymandering and winner-take-all, single-member districts more clearly visible than in the South. In the line of states running from Louisiana to Virginia, congressional races are nearly universally uncompetitive, Democrats are systematically disadvantaged, and African Americans are underrepresented in spite of the Voting Rights Act.
Through the use of sample maps, this report examines the impact that different redistricting criteria would have on partisan and racial representation in the South.